Our Oak Park, Illinois “World Can’t Wait” group had a VERY LOUD DROWN OUT from 7:15 PM to 9:15 PM at the corner of Lake St. and Harlem Ave. It was cold and windy, but the enthusiastic group of 125 stayed warm parading with signs and blasting out our message at a high decibel level into the streets, making noise with whistles, drums, pots & pans, plastic buckets, a trumpet, battery powered megaphones and boom boxes playing HIP-HOP music tracks from “Billionaires for Bush”. Many cell phone users driving past who couldn’t hear with their windows up stopped in mid-sentence to read our signs.
A large sign on a huge PVC frame called out “HONK IF BUSH NO.” The overwhelming response: motorists, bus and truck drivers tremendously ramped up the noise with their continual wild horn honking and hand “V” peace signs and all kinds of thumbs up.
“Fire the Liar!” “Bush Lied, Bush Spied, Thousands died!” The signs we held clearly spoke our message and our message was taken up by large numbers passing by. The enthusiasm of everyone on the corner and everyone in the street fed off each other and took it higher.
We probably hit our crescendo around 8:00 pm as the Pretender-In-Chief began spouting his lies on national television. There seemed to be a flow of demonstrators coming and going throughout the evening, with some passers-by spontaneously joining the band and many grabbing up leaflets. The ages ranged from 8 to 80, and the crowd was made up of diverse races, nationalities and professions from Schaumburg, Downers Grove, Mundelein, Cicero, Chicago, Berwyn, LaGrange and Riverside and including members of churches, anti-war groups, environmental groups and unaffiliated concerned citizens. All came together to support the Call, and despite being half frozen, no one wanted to go home but just kept it up and kept on reaching out to many, many more.
A local reporter and photographer showed up took the time to find out why people had come out and will publish the interviews and pictures in the weekly newspaper.
Police presence was minimal, with their only directives being to keep our stuff off the ledge next to the sidewalk where we stood and to insist that we keep out of the street. But one committed activist took the risk and made sure WCW flyers were given out to motorists as they waited at the intersection for their light to turn green.
Photos to come.